Big Strong Boy | Devan Collins Del Conte 

Once there was a big strong man. He got a girl pregnant and then he left and that’s normal.  The girl had the baby, a big strong boy, and when it was born it hurt her and that’s normal too.  But by and by the baby hurt other people. The baby was so strong, and always hurting people,  and that was a problem.  

But the lady fixed it. She moved them to a house in a forest. A house perched easy on a bluff  beside a river. Just her and the baby and the woods, and her the only one he hurt.  The boy grew up and all his friends were animals, and a lot of them he hurt til they were  dead. But he got older, he got lonely, and he learned some control: He didn’t hurt the animals so  much anymore, and he only hurt his ma when he was very upset. 

The animals he ran around with, they were the owl, the buck, the coyote, and the marmot.  They went around at night, scrambling over the bluff into the gullies and cricks and bamboo  patches that grew around there and had a sort of haunted feel.  

They played games where they were on special missions. The boy got those stories from his  ma when she was trying to calm him down.  

In the games the boy led, he was in charge.  

“If you don’t get the magic coin back from the emperor, the entire solar system is doomed!”  the boy shouted to the owl.  

The owl swooped across the clearing, black shadow on a patch of dark sky.  The boy climbed onto the buck’s back. He spurred the buck onward after the owl.  Over dips and valleys. The marmot perched on the boy’s back. The coyote a villain chasing  after them. They all played their part, it was a really good game.  

But it ended of course and came time to go home.  

They reached a big stream running fast and deep. Instead of backtracking to where the water  ran quiet, the boy found a nice big tree. He knocked it down, he made a bridge. He could do nice  things too, see? Single file, they crossed the shushing stream. The animals saw him home.  Morning came like it always did.  

Only this day, while they were eating their biscuits and jam and honey, drip dripping sweet— the boy and his ma at the table, nice and quiet, nobody upset and nobody hurting—this day the  knocks came. At the door. Big hamfist knocks that meant business.  

The boy looked at his ma. The ma stood. She put herself between the door and the boy. She  looked back and forth between them. Then she did a big breath, sent the boy to his room. 

The boy watched from his cracked door.  

Little man in a button shirt and tan pants, and he and the ma did whispers. The man was little  but he had the biggest hands. The ma stepped aside and the man came into the house.  There was fighting next, from the boy.  

But the man had a needle. He put the needle in the boy and that took the fight right out of  him. Still the boy could listen.  

Listen, said the ma. Listen. You’re gonna help people. They need boys like you. Big strong  boys. You’re gonna have use for that strength. You’re gonna help people.  So the boy went. Never saw his ma again. Never saw the buck the coyote the marmot the  owl, not one of ‘em once. Never knew how that man found him. Best guess, that man hid in the  forest and saw the boy knock down the tree. Saw how strong he was. The boy thought about that  a lot. How he never should’ve played that game.  

Anyway the boy used his strength like they taught him, he hurt lots of people. He’d hurt you  too if they told him, no problem. But the whole time, the whole time long, he missed the forest  and his friends and the house perched on the bluff, and most of all his ma. He missed the meat of  her. 

Devan Collins Del Conte is a queer writer living in Memphis, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in The Rupture, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Jellyfish Review, X-R-A-Y Lit and elsewhere. Find her @DevanDelConte or at devandelconte.com.